1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing device, an image processing method, an image processing system, and a computer-readable non-transitory recording medium. More particularly, the present invention relates to a technique of performing image processing on image data obtained by reading a document.
2. Description of the Background Art
In a technique conventionally known relating to an image reading device that generates image data by reading a document, image processing on the image data generated by reading the document is distributed to an information processing device connected to a network (as descried for example in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2012-65284). In this conventional technique, based on the image processing performance of the information processing device and a speed of communication with the information processing device, the image reading device determines whether the information processing device is to be responsible for the image processing on the image data. If determining that the information processing device is to be responsible for the image processing, the image reading device transmits the image data to the information processing device and makes the information processing device process the image data. When the information processing device finishes the image processing, the image reading device is to receive processed data from the information processing device.
The aforementioned conventional distributed processing is intended to complete one job readily to be executed as a series of processes including generating image data by reading a document and image processing on the image data. Thus, if the image processing performance of the information processing device is low or if a speed of communication with the information processing device is low, for example, the distributed processing is not performed and the image reading device becomes responsible for the series of all the processes.
In this case, the following situation may occur: reading a document is finished completely whereas image processing has not been finished completely by the image reading device. This makes it impossible for the image reading device to start reading a next document. In particular, if image processing to be performed by the image reading device is processing such as character recognition that takes a relatively long period of time, the image processing occupies a resource (such as a CPU) of the image reading device for a long period of time even after reading a document is finished completely. This makes the image reading device wait for a longer period of time to be ready for starting reading a next document. Unfortunately, this makes it impossible for a next user to use the image reading device readily.